Hidden Healthcare Voices

 

With the concurrent rise of racial tensions in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, much of public attention has focused on how structural racism negatively affects the health of non-White Americans, especially African-Americans. While much of this attention has been focused on patient outcomes and disparities, very little discussion has revolved around how BIPOC hospital staff are treated in their professional lives nor the ways in which the hospital itself can function as a racist institution by making it difficult for minority healthcare workers to care for their patients efficiently. Why is the medical hierarchy representative of the systems of disenfranchisement in our society? By taking a macroscopic approach to the pervasive issue of workplace bias within the medical field and then zooming in to the lived experiences of Anne, a nurse at the frontlines, we seek to illuminate this problem. Through Anne’s story, we reveal how the hospital enacts structural violence upon its workers of color and show that addressing systematic inequalities requires more than just magic bullet solutions. It necessitates the use of both vertical and horizontal interventions. Through a podcast platform, we hope to explore the history of risk healthcare workers of color have faced using a biosocial approach to better understand the psychologies of care providers and their lived inequities. By discussing the largely ignored issue of workplace discrimination and presenting Anne’s story, we invite future global health professionals to go beyond calls for diversity to address this understudied topic. As we work toward a more equitable future, we hope all listeners will be mindful of the hidden healthcare voices that are often overlooked.  

Click here or the image above to follow along with the transcript while you listen.

Hidden Healthcare Voices Podcast Team

Bibliography

ABC News. (2020, November 17). ABC News Live Update: States tighten COVID-19 restrictions as cases rise [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/s24wzlk4tCM

ABC News. (2020, April 7). Communities of color see alarming rates of COVID-19 cases [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/tgyZXMCJYDY

Adam Waytz, Kelly Marie Hoffman. “A Superhumanization Bias in Whites’ Perceptions of Blacks – Adam Waytz, Kelly Marie Hoffman, Sophie Trawalter, 2015.” SAGE Journals, 8 Oct. 2014, journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1948550614553642?casa_token=gcFFRLa_BhkAAAAA%3Am2R-GwxJXAT5Wi5HCUKEG4u6-_N9MmrTZiJ_ojZjIi7ziVZ2QQDi_57iQijZTwELeQ9mlass5WRY. 

Brooks, Rodney A. “Why African Americans Were More Likely to Die During the 1918 Flu Pandemic.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 5 Oct. 2020, www.history.com/news/1918-flu-pandemic-african-americans-healthcare-black-nurses.

“Employed Persons by Detailed Occupation, Sex, Race, and Hispanic or Latino Ethnicity.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 22 Jan. 2020, www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm. 

Farmer, Paul. On Suffering and Structural Violence: a View from Below. Blackwell., 2009. 

M;, Al-Dweik G;Ahmad. “Matching Nursing Assignment to Patients’ Acuity Level: The Road to Nurses’ Satisfaction.” Journal of Nursing Measurement, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2019, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31068499/. 

Nguyen, L. (2020, July 31). Risk of COVID-19 among front-line health-care workers and the general community: a prospective cohort study.  Retrieved December 6, 2020, from https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(20)30164-X/fulltext

Rimmer, A. (2020). Covid-19: Disproportionate impact on ethnic minority healthcare workers will be explored by government. Bmj, M1562. doi:10.1136/bmj.m1562

Today. (2020, May 30). Nationwide Protests Intensify Over Death Of George Floyd | TODAY [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/WiIC388kj6A

Wingfield, A. H. (2020, August 17). The Disproportionate Impact of Covid-19 on Black Health Care Workers in the U.S. Retrieved December 06, 2020, from https://hbr.org/2020/05/the-disproportionate-impact-of-covid-19-on-black-health-care-workers-in-the-u-s